Herry's Archives

Stocks and Harvestgate in 1973. Click the heading for more photos  Under Patrick, Stocks (with the addition of Harvestgate) became one of the finest farms in the Meon Valley, regularly winning prizes for its crops. In the early days, sugar beet and potatoes were grown alongside the oats, wheat and barley, and beef cattle were reared and there were sheep on the downs. But as time went on, the farm became essentially purely an arable farm, particularly well known for the quality of its barley. In later years, Patrick took specialist advice on fertilizers and soil quality which improved yields significantly, and when he turned 80 in 1994, turned over much of the day to day management of the farm to his neighbour Stephen Horn, who maintained it to the same high standard - and still does today (2008).    The caption reads: 'Hampshire farming at its very best - harvesting on Old Winchester Hill, Warnford" Hampshire Magazine's photo of Stocks Down and the...

This is an extract from The Llanbadarn Churchyard by AW Gilbey This section of the Churchyard of St. Padarn's Church, Llanbadarn Fawr, is used exclusively for burials by the Evans family, owners of the Lovesgrove Estate . The Evans family also have a vault in the older, closed section of the Churchyard at A139. When Sir Griffith Humphrey Pugh Evans died in 1902 he left three sons and four daughters and the Lovesgrove estate passed to one of his sons, Lewis Pugh Evans . Lewis Pugh Evans was the second son of the Evans family and he was educated at Eton and Sandhurst before entering the Army with a commission in the Black Watch with whom he served in the Boer War in South Africa: there he received the Queen's Medal and later the King's Medal. After service with the Black Watch in India Lewis Pugh Evans returned to England and obtained a pilot's certificate and when the First World War broke out in 1914 he was posted as an observer with the Royal Flying Corps but after a...

Penny Hitchcock  lived in Bishops Waltham and went out with Herry for four years from 1965, when he was at university and also when he subsequently moved to  10 Shouldham St  to work at  Millers .  Penny herself moved to London in about 1965 - first to No 9 Bolton Gardens, then Rowland Gardens and Harrington Gardens. Her flat-mates were Sarah (Weemus) Keen (later Couzens) and Lynn Proudlock. Penny worked for Hutchinson the publishers and then Chamberlain, Powell and Bon (who designed the Barbican). Later she married Andrea Cenci di Bello, an architect, and had a son, Lorenzo, who married in 2006. Penny was for a time a City of London councillor,.  She now lives in Switzerland.  Click here to return to the Archive Index

The Futatsumori ('Two Forests') family come from a village of the same name in Aomori, near where Ayako's parents Juro and Shizue lived. It's a large village and members of the family still live there, including a cousin who is a local politician. There is a fine bridge nearby which bears the family crest. Juro moved to Tokyo before the war, and served with the Japanese army in China. Ayako's mother's family, the Takahashi's, are from Tokyo. Shizue Takahashi and Juro Futatsumori were married and returned to Aomori in the 1950s where he became a schoolteacher, later the headmaster of a local primary school. He was also a noted kendo master . Shizue had seven children, the eldest being Taeko, who lives in Aomori City; Ayako (1955) being the youngest. Osamu is the oldest brother, but a second brother, Seiko , had a breakdown at the age of 19 and went into a home. He died in July 2007. Of the three other sisters, Junko married an American Seymour Bogitc...

Albert Melville Watson (1920-2002) was educated at Geelong and became a highly successful businessman (known to his friends as 'Multi') starting a mining business after the war with his father Albert Henry Watson. They acquired the rights (some say they won them playing golf) to mine the beaches and hinterland of the Gold Coast for minerals such as rutile. He sold the mining business when still in his 40s and diversified by investing in the manufacture of mining tools (A1 Hardchrome) and importing clothes (Fila). He was a fine golfer, captain of the Australian Golf Club 1960-1962, played bowls for New South Wales and was an excellent bridge player, playing at international level. He also liked to play high-stakes poker with the likes of Kerry Packer.   He married Timmie (Norma Doris) Fleming in 1944 and they had three children - Penny , Prue and Andrew - who grew up in the family house, Somerset, at 62 Wentworth Road, Vaucluse . They were divorced in the 1960s and Mel marri...

Litchfield has played a large part in the lives of the family since the 1930s and the little church of St James the Less is the family church. My grandmother Nina , Sir Alfred Herbert's third wife, attended church there with Sir Alfred from Dunley . In 1930, Sir Alfred had the low retaining wall on the roadside of the churchyard built as well as the path up to the porch while the family of his second wife, Florence Pepper, erected the lytchgate in her memory . My mother Annette was married to Arthur Luxmoore there in 1935 and my father Patrick's first wife Catherine Lawford (nee Stephenson) was buried there in 1941. Herry was christened there in Sept 1945, when the family was living at Litchfield Manor Sir Alfred Herbert was interred there with Florence in 1957 (a service that was followed by a memorial service in Coventry Cathedral). Nina donated the organ to the church in memory of Sir Alfred, commorated by a plaque Many of the Dunley and Litchfield est...

Annette learned the piano when young and played often, sometime accompanying her great friend Kitty Bulman while she sang her favourite arias . She also used to play for us at Christmas and other parties. We had a nursery rhyme song book from which we sang songs such as 'A Fox Went Out on a Starlight Night', 'The Frog and The Crow' and the rather awful 'What Have You Got For Dinner Mrs Bond?'. Fortunately, there were many gentler pieces too, such as 'I Saw Three Ships'. The book had the most beautiful illustrations. In particular, the frog of the song was dressed in a beautiful pink dress with a golden cape while the crow was decidedly handsome in a back tailcoat. The 'dancers in yellow' were obviously the buttercups in the meadow, so that it was easy to imagine the poor frog being seduced..... Click here to see pages from the book